Her dad sat contemplating words, images,
similes, metaphors, analogies. To the best
of anyone’s knowledge he didn’t do cross-

word puzzles. He just contemplated language,
the English language, not Hebrew even though
he was Jewish converted to Roman Catholic-

ism, maybe a bit of Latin, which we all were
told we had to study in high school because
so many English words have their origin in

Latin. While his wife left the house every day
to work for an insurance company, it wasn’t
easy for her, given her semi-paralyzed legs

and one day the little girl would take care
of her mother and do so gladly. The little girl
sat in her dad’s lap as he recited Shakespeare

and then he up and died when the little girl
was seven and for the next forty years she
went in search of the man who gave her the

love of language and she found him through
her own writings and she whispered, “I love
you, daddy.”